Rosenhaus and the Carpetbaggers

On the late, great News Chronicle Packer Forum it was common to whine about these dreary agents and their destruction of the game. Is there any question that they are destroying our team and the game? Whining doesn't do much. We should review here, the positives about getting organized to save our sports.

It's time for the fans to get organized and DO something about this ****.

I suggest joining one or all of the fan organizations that are trying to stand up against the wholesale destruction of the Green Bay Packers, the NFL and all sports.

Organized fans can fight to eliminate the carpetbagging agents, turn the teams over to the communities; fashion a fair and reasonable salary system and SAVE OUR TEAM AND GAMES!

I hate to sound like the pessimist, but the fans will never be able to change the NFL unless we stop watching and stop paying for $12 brats and $85 dollar tickets. They know they have us by the hoohoos and they're not letting go. And you know what... in a perverted kinda way - we sorta like it :shrug:

It would take a very intense and through organiation with a large following to have an effect. You would have to boycott games, boycott watching games, and boycott sponsors of the games. Then you would also have to show the sponsors, networks and teams that this is happening by their sales and ratings being effected negatively by, I would guess, 10-20% or more. Also you may need a write in campaign along with this. And that would have to happen, and maybe more, until the changes you want are accomplished.

Myself and several people I know wrote off baseball because of the last strike and for the fact they have no salary cap, no even playing field between teams. I will not go to a game, I do not watch games, and I find it hard boycott their sponsors because they are everwhere. I started drinking Busch beer somtime back and wouldn't you know after a while they started advertising that. And some was on baseball. As far as I know baseball is still the same, except they can use steroids.

Sports are just like a drug. When the NFL had a strike years back, darned if my world didn't keep going. In fact, that fall I did more hunting, fishing, sight seeing, got more exercise, spent less money, did more family things, paid more attention to my dogs, got more things done around the house and other things, than I had in the past. LA has not team and they seem to be normal, well close. But when the games came back there I was. That "drug" was back in front of me and I lapped it up like I had been suffering from withdrawl, while in fact I had had a pretty good time and got a lot of things done without it.

Well here I am on a forum, my "new drug" that keeps me going with my football fix.Waiting for the season to start.

I will be glad to join you people if you can come up with something that will really have an effect. :thumbsup:

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A Consumer Group for Sports Fans

In the Public Interest
By Ralph Nader
June 8, 1977

"Greed," screams the lurid headline on the cover of this month's "Sport" magazine, "Look what It's Done To Our Games."

"It's consumer fraud," exclaims an obviously upset sportswriter in recounting a spate of what he considered to be tricky maneuvers in the industry of professional sports.

Is it time for the millions of sports fans to join the consumer movement and defend their interests? Judging by conversations with fans, sportswriters and the growth of the consumer and taxpayer abuses, the question is not outlandish.

First, there are the more immediate gripes -- spiraling ticket prices, high-priced junk food at the concessions, TV blackouts, and season-ticket exclusions for the non-affluent and politically non-connected.

Second, there are abuses of the players, such as artificial turf hazards, because team owners believe Monsanto and disbelieve stars like Gale Sayers who says his career was cut short by the big green mats.

In pro hockey, there are so many teams that player dilution is obvious to any casual observer. So team promoters discover that hockey violence can replace hockey skills on the rinks and on the television screen until the spectacle becomes sickening to all but the sadistically inclined.

Third, there are the excesses of the sports corporations that field these teams. Often recipients of substantial tax subsidies, as in the coliseum rampage of recent years, many of these companies are created because the tax advantages to their millionaire owners instead of a desire to meet a supporting market of sports fans.

The sting of market failure for an expansion team, for instance, is cushioned by the tax writeoff. Such a bailout option contributes to management that is insensitive to the fan's desire for skilled events at reasonable prices.

Each professional sport fields its own particular injustices to the fans, whether as consumers or taxpayers. Phony winner-take-all tennis contests, hyped media promotions in boxing, tax-sheltered expansions and some special anti-trust exemptions in basketball and baseball, the over-extension and overlap of schedules by different sports, to list a few.

Since they are paying all the bills, shouldn't the fans exercise some fundamental consumer rights to know and to shape the product or service they are buying?

For example, the rules of the sport affect the attractiveness of the play. The fans should be represented before the sports leagues during rule change deliberation or expansion policy. They might have some good ideas to suggest along with their commentary on the proposals.

The operations of "amateur" athletics and the NCAA rules and regulations also deserve the attention of the fans.

Sportswriter Roy Blount, Jr. points to a possible general collapse of the sports economy, due to the high velocity machinations of the fast buck operators, before reason begins to prevail.

He quotes Philadelphia's Bobby Clarke, the president of the NHL Players Association, as saying, "All our salaries must come down. It's crazy. The game and its integrity are more important than what one person wants."

Perhaps, with season shortened and the teams less financially unstable or frenzied, the players will last longer. And the fans will recover an identity and familiarity with the local team that made the Celtics, Canadiens and Dodgers memorable beyond their superior exploits.

Fans who watch play for pay are getting turned off when the play for pay is for a different team every two or three years. There is a limit to buying championships instead of developing them.

How would the fans reflect their interests? One way is to associate into a sports fans organization with a monthly publication and full-time, skilled staff. In this manner the fans can achieve the kind of regular, representation of their interests, small and large, that is needed to prevail before owners, leagues, and various government commissions and agencies.

All in all, such a development could lead to more solid and exciting sports as well as a little involvement for the ever-bystanding fan. With the fans gaining a voice beyond yelling at the games, more sportswriters may replace freebies and flatteries with professional journalistic performance.

If interested in the idea of a consumer group for sports fans, write to FANS, P.O. Box 19312, Washington, DC 20036. Send your ideas when you write.

Gravedigger, thank you for the info. Do you know of any aspect of a sport that any of these org's have directly effected or does on just need faith that these org's are having a positive effect?

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They've provided some important info on the situation and been players in questioning some of the stadium scams around the country. But the whole idea of fans getting themselves organized is fairly new.

Potentially, fan/taxpayer organzation can be very powerful. But obviously, there is a lot of work to be done in simply re-popularizing common sense.